Auditing & Assurance Services: A Systematic Approach

The fundamental values central to the Messier Jr./Glover/Prawitt text include: student engagement, a systematic approach, and decision making.

Student Engagement: The authors believe students are best served by acquiring a strong understanding of the basic concepts that underlie the audit process and how to apply those concepts to various audit and assurance services. The text is accessible to students through straightforward writing and the use of engaging, relevant real-world examples, illustrations, and analogies. The text explicitly encourages students to “stop and think” at important points in the text to help them apply principles covered and also helps students see the application of concepts in a practical setting through “practice insight” boxes.

A Systematic Approach: The authors first introduce the three underlying concepts of audit risk, materiality, and evidence, then follow with a discussion of audit planning, the assessment of control risk, and a discussion of the nature, timing, and extent of evidence necessary to reach the appropriate level of detection risk. These concepts are then applied to each major business process and related account balances using a risk-based approach, (in following with the new standards adopted by the various auditing boards).

Decision Making: Since much of auditing practice involves the application of auditor judgment, the authors focus on critical judgments and decision-making processes. If a student understands these basic concepts and how to apply them to an audit engagement, he or she will be more effective in today's dynamic audit environment. The new edition even includes a full advanced module on Professional Judgment.

Professor Steven M. Glover is the K. Fred Skousen Professor and Associate Dean of the Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University. Professor Glover is a CPA in Utah and holds a PhD and BS from the University of Washington and an AA in Business from BYU – Idaho. He previously worked as an auditor for KPMG LLP and as a director in the national office of PwC LLP. Professor Glover is currently serving on the AICPA Auditing Standards Board and has served on the audit committee of a nonprofit organization. He has served on the board of advisors for technology companies and he actively consults with public companies and public accounting firms. He has also served as an expert witness. Professor Glover is a past President of the Auditing Section of the American Accounting Association and he has been on auditing-related task forces of the AICPA. Professor Glover is or has served on the editorial boards of Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, The Accounting Review, Current Issues in Auditing, and the review board of the AAA/CAQ Access to Audit Personnel Program. He has authored or coauthored over 40 articles and books primarily focused in the areas of auditor decision making, audit education, and audit practice. Together with Professor Prawitt and KPMG, LLP, he co-authored an award-winning monograph designed to accelerate the professional judgment of auditors and auditing students, as well as a monograph on professional skepticism commissioned by the Standards Working Group of the GPPC, an international consortium of the six largest public accounting network firms.

Professor Douglas F. Prawitt is the Glen Ardis Professor of Accountancy at the Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University. Professor Prawitt is a CPA in Utah. He holds a PhD from the University of Arizona, and BS and MAcc degrees from Brigham Young University. Professor Prawitt was awarded the Marriott School’s Teaching Excellence and Outstanding Researcher awards in 1998 and 2000. He received the Merrill J. Bateman Student Choice Teaching Award in 2002, BYU’s Wesley P. Lloyd Award for Distinction in Graduate Education in 2006, and the American Accounting Association’s Deloitte/Wildman Award in 2013.